OAKLAND, Calif. — IF you were looking for ways to increase public skepticism about global warming, you could hardly do better than the forthcoming nine-part series on climate change and natural disasters, starting this Sunday on Showtime. A trailer for “Years of Living Dangerously” is terrifying, replete with images of melting glaciers, raging wildfires and rampaging floods. “I don’t think scary is the right word,” intones one voice. “Dangerous, definitely.”

Showtime’s producers undoubtedly have the best of intentions. There are serious long-term risks associated with rising greenhouse gas emissions, ranging from ocean acidification to sea-level rise to decreasing agricultural output.

But there is every reason to believe that efforts to raise public concern about climate change by linking it to natural disasters will backfire. More than a decade’s worth of research suggests that fear-based appeals about climate change inspire denial, fatalism and polarization.

For instance, Al Gore’s 2006 documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” popularized the idea that today’s natural disasters are increasing in severity and frequency because of human-caused global warming. It also contributed to public backlash and division. Since 2006, the number of Americans telling Gallup that the media was exaggerating global warming grew to 42 percent today from about 34 percent. Meanwhile, the gap between Democrats and Republicans on whether global warming is caused by humans rose to 42 percent last year from 26 percent in 2006, according to the Pew Research Center.

Other factors contributed. Some conservatives and fossil-fuel interests questioned the link between carbon emissions and global warming. And beginning in 2007, as the country was falling into recession, public support for environmental protection declined.

Still, environmental groups have known since 2000 that efforts to link climate change to natural disasters could backfire, after researchers at the Frameworks Institute studied public attitudes for its report “How to Talk About Global Warming.” Messages focused on extreme weather events, they found, made many Americans more likely to view climate change as an act of God — something to be weathered, not prevented.

Some people, the report noted, “are likely to buy an SUV to help them through the erratic weather to come” for example, rather than support fuel-efficiency standards.

Since then, evidence that a fear-based approach backfires has grown stronger. A frequently cited 2009 study in the journal Science Communication summed up the scholarly consensus. “Although shocking, catastrophic, and large-scale representations of the impacts of climate change may well act as an initial hook for people’s attention and concern,” the researchers wrote, “they clearly do not motivate a sense of personal engagement with the issue and indeed may act to trigger barriers to engagement such as denial.” In a controlled laboratory experiment published in Psychological Science in 2010, researchers were able to use “dire messages” about global warming to increase skepticism about the problem.

Many climate advocates ignore these findings, arguing that they have an obligation to convey the alarming facts.

But claims linking the latest blizzard, drought or hurricane to global warming simply can’t be supported by the science. Our warming world is, according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, increasing heat waves and intense precipitation in some places, and is likely to bring more extreme weather in the future. But the panel also said there is little evidence that this warming is increasing the loss of life or the economic costs of natural disasters. “Economic growth, including greater concentrations of people and wealth in periled areas and rising insurance penetration,” the climate panel noted, “is the most important driver of increasing losses.”2013 has shown the true colors of the left’s false narrative on global warming. Both poles have expanding ice, with the Antarctic breaking...

Claims that current disasters are connected to climate change do seem to motivate many liberals to support action. But they alienate conservatives in roughly equal measure.

What works, say environmental pollsters and researchers, is focusing on popular solutions. Climate advocates often do this, arguing that solar and wind can reduce emissions while strengthening the economy. But when renewable energy technologies are offered as solutions to the exclusion of other low-carbon alternatives, they polarize rather than unite.

One recent study, published by Yale Law School’s Cultural Cognition Project, found that conservatives become less skeptical about global warming if they first read articles suggesting nuclear energy or geoengineering as solutions. Another study, in the journal Nature Climate Change in 2012, concluded that “communication should focus on how mitigation efforts can promote a better society” rather than “on the reality of climate change and averting its risks.”

Nonetheless, virtually every major national environmental organization continues to reject nuclear energy, even after four leading climate scientists wrote them an open letter last fall, imploring them to embrace the technology as a key climate solution. Together with catastrophic rhetoric, the rejection of technologies like nuclear and natural gas by environmental groups is most likely feeding the perception among many that climate change is being exaggerated. After all, if climate change is a planetary emergency, why take nuclear and natural gas off the table?

While the urgency that motivates exaggerated claims is understandable, turning down the rhetoric and embracing solutions like nuclear energy will better serve efforts to slow global warming.

Ted Nordhaus is the chairman and Michael Shellenberger is the president of the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental research organization.

ROCHESTER, Minn. - A Rochester bar employee is hospitalized after being overcome by carbon dioxide from the restaurant's pop machine. Authorities say 63-year-old Jerry Johnson was poisoned by the gas while working Monday morning at Rooster's Barn and Grill. Deputy Fire Chief Vance Swisher tells KTTC-TV employees at Rooster's heard what sounded like something leaking. That's when Johnson went downstairs to check it out. Swisher says a carbonation machine that puts the fizz into the restaurant's pop had malfunctioned and filled the basement with carbon dioxide. Johnson collapsed when he went into the basement. A co-worker called 911. Restaurant patrons and employees tried to pull him out, but turned back because they couldn't breathe. Firefighters had to use breathing tanks while inside the restaurant. Mayo Clinic says Johnson is in serious condition.

As long as the alarmists rely on anecdotal evidence, I would like to share my anecdotal rebuttals.

It is late April and in not too long of a time the days will again begin to get shorter, yet parts of MN received 19 inches of snow this week, the Great Lakes are still 37% frozen over (below) and our own 17,000 acre skating rink pictured here in the twin cities metro shows winter in full bloom. It is 70 now and spring will spring quickly, but this was one heck of a winter here for the record books.

Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts demonstrates that life on Earth is not suffering from rising temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels. Citing reams of real-world data, it offers solid scientific evidence that most plants actually flourish when exposed to both higher temperatures and greater CO2 concentrations. In fact, it demonstrates that the planet’s terrestrial biosphere is undergoing a great greening, which is causing deserts to shrink and forests to expand, thereby enlarging and enhancing habitat for wildlife. And much the same story can be told of global warming and atmospheric CO2 enrichment’s impacts on terrestrial animals, aquatic life, and human health.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------(The toxicity level for CO2 poisoning is 40,000 ppm, not 400!)

There is no question the atmospheric level of CO2, an inefficient greenhouse gas, has increased by one part per ten thousand over the last hundred years. There is no question the general temp trend since the last "Little Ice Age" has been that of gradual warming.There is also no question that the Great Lakes froze over THIS YEAR and that Antarctica and parts of the Himalayas have gained ice mass most recently.

President Obama racked up close to $3 million in flight costs this year on two trips he billed as business but spent playing golf

President Barack Obama spent spent $2,952,278 in flight costs on trips to Palm Springs, California, and Key Largo, Florida, earlier this year The president went on the trips under the guise of official business But the president's schedule and news reports from the trips show that he spent significatly more time playing golf than he did on presidential duties

ByFrancesca Chambers

Published: 17:18 EST, 30 April 2014 | Updated: 07:28 EST, 1 May 2014

The White House spent $2,952,278 in flight expenses this year for two trips President Barack Obama took on which he spent a large chunk of his time playing golf.

Obama billed both trips as official business, but he spent more time golfing than he did participating in government meetings, government oversight organization Judicial Watch reports.

+4 President Barack Obama boards Marine One helicopter before his departure from Key Largo, Florida on Sunday, March 9. Taxpayers paid $885,683 in Air Force One flight costs alone for Obama's trip

The conservative organization obtained the cost of Obama's Air Force 1 trips through Freedom of Information Act requests. The cost per flying hour of the president's plane is $210,877, the Department of the Air Force told Judicial Watch.

The cost per flying hour includes fuel, food consumed on the flight and maintenance to the plane, the Department of the Air Force said in its response. It does not include the cost of the cargo plane that accompanies the president, as The White House Dossier points out.

The two trips in question occurred in February and March of this year when the president flew to Palm Springs, California, and Key Largo, Florida, respectively.

The first trip took place over President's Day weekend from February 17- 20. The total flight cost for this trip was $2,066,594.60, Judicial Watch reports.

On the first day of the trip, President Obama arrived in Fresno, California, at 2.30 pm local time. There he met with community leaders at a water facility before touring a local farm and making public remarks on the state's water crisis.

'It can’t just be a matter of there’s going to be less and less water so I’m going to grab more and more of a shrinking share of water,' Obama said at the event. 'Instead what we have to do is all come together and figure out how we all are going to make sure that agricultural needs, urban needs, industrial needs, environmental and conservation concerns are all addressed.'

Obama then flew to Palm Springs, where he he met with King Abdullah II of Jordan. The two had a working dinner that begin at 7.50 pm local time.

The president's public schedule does not say when their meeting ended nor does it say how he spent Saturday, Sunday or the first half of Monday, a federal holiday, before he left Palm Springs at 2 pm local time.

+4 Room with a view: This photo taken from inside the Sunnylands Center & Gardens at Rancho Mirage, California, where President Barack Obama played golf two times over President's Day weekend while he was on a trip billed as official White House business

+4 President Barack Obama played golf with friends during his trip to Palm Spring, California at luxury course Porcupine Creek. This exclusive golf course is not open to the public

Time Magazine reports that Obama spent those three days golfing with friends at two of the area's exclusive golf clubs - Sunnylands and Porcupine Creek. Neither are open to the public.

Obama's outings drew ire immediately afterward because the area's golf clubs are a contributing factor to the region's water crisis.

Each golf course Obama visited uses an average of one million gallons of water a day to keep the grass green. The courses use three to four times more water per day than normal American golf courses because of the area's hot, dry climate, Time reports.

The second trip, which occurred less than a month later, from March 7-9, cost $885,683.40 in flight expenses, the watchdog group said.

For that trip, the First Family joined the president. The Obama's arrived in Homestead, Florida, on Friday at 1.40 pm eastern time. The President and the First Lady spoke at a high school at 2.25 pm. There are no public events on the president's schedule after that until Monday morning, when he is listed as having received his daily briefing at the White House at 10 am.

The White House said Obama had 'a bit of down time in the warm weather with his wife and daughters' that weekend.

The Obama's stayed at the Ocean Reef Club, where the president played two rounds of golf with friends.

The First Family was accompanied on that trip by 50 secret service agents and five government helicopters, the Washington Times reports.

'Only President Obama would deliver a brief speech about education and then have the nerve to jet over to the posh Ocean Reef Clubs — an exclusive members-only resort for the wealthy — for a quick vacation,' said Jahan Wilcox, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, in March of the trip.

Other costs for the trips such as food and lodging are unknown, but Judicial Watch says the President, Vice President and their immediate families have spent upward of $40 million since 2009 on taxpayer funded trips.

The Obama's most expensive trips were in 2013 when they went to Africa and Honolulu, Hawaii, the reports says.

+4 Obama billed both trips as official business, but he spent more time golfing than he did participating in government meetings. Obama is pictured here at a golf course in Kaneohe, Oahu, Hawaii, during another expensive trip he took this year

"The mitigation chapter implicitly recognizes the unreality of the conventional climate agenda, and it concludes with an acknowledgment that we need much more research on affordable low- and non-carbon energy sources along with more basic climate science research into key "uncertainties." Anyone else who talks this way gets called a "denier." "

The Latest Storm of Climate AlarmismThe National Climate Assessment is not nearly as dire as its cheerleaders suggest.

By STEVEN F. HAYWARDMay 8, 2014 6:55 p.m. ETThe third National Climate Assessment, released Tuesday by the White House, may not do anything to protect Americans from the effects of climate change, but it has done its primary job—generating alarming headlines in the media and setting the stage for a renewed push by the Obama administration for its climate-policy agenda.

Coming barely six weeks after the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's most recent alarmist report—also duly trumpeted in the media—we have now reached the junkie's-craving phase of the climate-change story, where bigger and more frequent fixes are necessary to keep alive the euphoria of saving the world. Confronted with polls and surveys finding that the public is tuning out climate change as a matter of vital concern, the climate campaign seemingly persists in thinking that one more report will turn the tide in its favor.

At 829 pages—plus a separate 137-page "highlights" summary—the National Climate Assessment is yet another behemoth report that few will entirely read, let alone fully comprehend or be able to judge. It can, however, be summarized by a sentence from the online introduction to the report: "Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present."

The report was produced by "more than 300 experts guided by a 60-member Federal Advisory Committee." Each chapter was assembled by specialists in subfields, though the complete roster of participating scientists includes a number who have expressed caution or skepticism about many of the claims popular today, such as climate-change-induced increases in damaging droughts, violent "superstorms," species extinction and air pollution.

In coming weeks, knowledgeable critics will no doubt do the tedious job of noting the report's omissions of contrary or confounding scientific findings. But this will likely have little effect on the shape of the climate debate, which is deluged with clichés and slogans such as "97% of scientists agree" and "only the fossil-fuel industry" stands in the way of solutions. Never mind that one of the lead authors of the report's chapter on "Adaptation" is an employee of Chevron. CVX -0.05%

The report argues that significant economic impacts of human-caused climate change in the U.S. are already occurring: "Corn producers in Iowa, oyster growers in Washington State, and maple syrup producers in Vermont are all observing climate-related changes that are outside of recent experience." These are less scientific facts than they are political statements. While climate changes can indeed be measured in economic terms, proof that they are "human-caused" is far from definitive.

In this respect, the report loosely tracks the economically risible 2006 "Stern Review" in Great Britain; its principal author, Nicholas Stern, later admitted that the report was crafted purely with political aims in mind. With the deep-Malthusian John Holdren advising President Obama and overseeing U.S. climate policy, does anyone think this report wasn't also politically calculated?

More interesting are the chapters on what should be done, which account for barely 100 pages of the 829-page report. Missing from the admirably short chapter on "Mitigation," the term of art for suppressing hydrocarbon energy, is any of the dreamlike slogans that we can replace fossil fuels easily, quickly, or cheaply if only we'd ratify the Kyoto Protocol and step up subsidies for renewable-energy sources.

The mitigation chapter implicitly recognizes the unreality of the conventional climate agenda, and it concludes with an acknowledgment that we need much more research on affordable low- and non-carbon energy sources along with more basic climate science research into key "uncertainties." Anyone else who talks this way gets called a "denier."

This refreshing realism, almost wholly ignored in the media coverage, sets the stage for the longer chapter on "Adaptation," which is woefully incomplete in many respects. It laments rather than celebrates that a great deal of adaptation and planning, such as better water management and developing heat-resistant crops, is already happening spontaneously without a central policy, and will be necessary even if future climate change occurs for entirely natural reasons. And yet, as with the latest U.N. report on climate change, the chapter requires careful reading to see that climate realism—a responsible, "no regrets" policy that skeptics have recommended for more than two decades—is slowly if grudgingly gaining the upper hand in the inner councils of the climate establishment.

This will not slow the Obama administration's drive to kill off coal-fired power, block the Keystone XL pipeline... (more at link)

Regarding the Hockey Stick of IPCC 2001 evidence now indicates, in my view, that an IPCC Lead Author working with a small cohort of scientists, misrepresented the temperature record of the past 1000 years by (a) promoting his own result as the best estimate, (b) neglecting studies that contradicted his, and (c) amputating another’s result so as to eliminate conflicting data and limit any serious attempt to expose the real uncertainties of these data.http://climateaudit.org/2014/05/09/mann-misrepresents-the-epa-part-1/

"alarmists needed tree ring data to negate the overwhelming evidence of temperature variation in the past, e.g., the Medieval Warm Period. The problem was that the same tree ring data that the alarmists needed to smooth out past ups and downs in the Earth’s climate showed cooling, not warming, after 1960."

The Hockey Stick curve depicts a slightly meandering Northern Hemisphere cooling trend from 1000 A.D. through 1900, which then suddenly swings upward in the last 80 years to temperatures warmer than any of the millennium when smoothed. To many, this appeared to be a “smoking gun” of temperature change proving that the 20th century warming was unprecedented and therefore likely to be the result of human emissions of greenhouse gases. …

We were appointed L.A.s in 1998. The Hockey Stick was prominently featured during IPCC meetings from 1999 onward. I can assure the committee that those not familiar with issues regarding reconstructions of this type (and even many who should have been) were truly enamored by its depiction of temperature and sincerely wanted to believe it was truth. Skepticism was virtually non-existent. Indeed it was described as a “clear favourite” for the overall Policy Makers Summary (Folland, 0938031546.txt).

In our Sept. 1999 meeting (Arusha, Tanzania) we were shown a plot containing more temperature curves than just the Hockey Stick including one from K. Briffa that diverged significantly from the others, showing a sharp cooling trend after 1960. It raised the obvious problem that if tree rings were not detecting the modern warming trend, they might also have missed comparable warming episodes in the past. In other words, absence of the Medieval warming in the Hockey Stick graph might simply mean tree ring proxies are unreliable, not that the climate really was relatively cooler.

The Briffa curve created disappointment for those who wanted “a nice tidy story” (Briffa 0938031546.txt). The L.A. [Michael Mann] remarked in emails that he did not want to cast “doubt on our ability to understand factors that influence these estimates” and thus, “undermine faith in paleoestimates” which would provide “fodder” to “skeptics” (Mann 0938018124.txt). One may interpret this to imply that being open and honest about uncertainties was not the purpose of this IPCC section. Between this email (22 Sep 1999) and the next draft sent out (Nov 1999, Fig. 2.25 Expert Review) two things happened: (a) the email referring to a “trick” to “hide the decline” for the preparation of report by the World Meteorological Organization was sent (Jones 0942777075.txt, “trick” is apparently referring to a splicing technique used by the L.A. [Michael Mann] in which non-paleo data were merged to massage away a cooling dip at the last decades of the original Hockey Stick) and (b) the cooling portion of Briffa’s curve had been truncated for the IPCC report (it is unclear as to who performed the truncation.) …

When we met in February 2000 in Auckland NZ, the one disagreeable curve, as noted, was not the same anymore because it had been modified and truncated around 1960.

Where did the green line go? It was covered up and then cut off at the point where it contradicted the 'hockey stick'.

If tree ring data is unreliable, fine. But then why did they allow the earlier data to rely on it? These graphs make the inference that we are measuring the same phenomenon, the same way, over an extended period of time. In fact, we weren't. And that fact, among so many others, was kept from even the lead authors of the report!

Now we see honest scientists backing off while we see crooked politicians doubling down.

Yes, wouldn't you think so? But No. We already knew they were lying, cherry picking and altering data and deceiving. We already knew their models are all wrong - built on false premises, omitting major natural phenomena and putting out wrong forecasts, and no one seems to care. They poll the scientists and public on vague questions and assert that 98%, or 66%, all agree (on what??). Human caused warming is false but true. We can't measure it, and the data, models and forecasts are all false, but we are emitting CO2 and there is some fraction of a degree per century, temporary, human caused warming. It is unmeasurable and less than the variations in the sun, the oceans, the clouds, and many other things, but it is true.

I don't know where the line is when people will get fed up with being lied to - on a number of topics. This forum and especially this thread exposing deceit is a great resource for following it. Posts going back to the first page here exposed most of this, just not the emails, texts and the full extent of their agenda motive and their abandonment of scientific methods.

Look back at this post:

http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1454.msg20739#msg20739BBG: Damn Liars & Stats September 06, 2008"...Mann includes at this site a large number of temperature proxy data series. ... nless the data is measured with error, you never, ever, for no reason, under no threat, SMOOTH the series! And if for some bizarre reason you do smooth it, you absolutely on pain of death do NOT use the smoothed series as input for other analyses! ... The tree ring data is not temperature (say that out loud). This is why it is called a proxy. Because it is a proxy, the uncertainty of its ability to predict temperature must be taken into account in the final results. Did Mann do this?"

Also in a 2008 BBG post: "no rise in temperatures since 1998". Add 6 more years to that! Where is the warming??! When warming does in fact come back, we will know it is cyclical, not on a straight line upward. It is cold here still. How come global warming has nothing to do with the temperature outside? It does of course, but only the data that supports the theory.

Didn't Dan Rather start the false but true defense? They went to broadcast with the smoking gun. It was a 1970s military typewriter document showing that Bush's military record was weak. Within days it was exposed by rightwingers on Powerlineblog.com that their smioking gun was made using a Microsoft proportional spacing font, obviously not available in the early 1970s. Confronted with exposed, amateur fraud, Rather and CBS argued that although the evidence was false, the larger story was true.

+4Row: Renowned Swedish scientist Professor Lennart Bengtsson of Reading University was at the centre of an international row last weekGround-breaking climate research that was controversially ‘covered up’ suggests the rate that greenhouse gases are heating the Earth has been significantly exaggerated, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Renowned Swedish scientist Professor Lennart Bengtsson of Reading University was at the centre of an international row last week when his study was rejected by a leading science journal after it was said to be ‘harmful’ and have a ‘negative impact’.

The rejection sparked accusations that scientists had crossed an important line by censoring findings that were not helpful to their views.

Prof Bengtsson further claims one of the world’s most recognised science publications also decided not to use his research findings, because, he said, they were considered to be ‘uninteresting’.

Prof Bengtsson’s critical paper was co-authored with four colleagues. It focused on the growing gap between real temperatures and predictions made by computers.In a recent key report, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated the ‘climate sensitivity’ – the amount the world will warm each time carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere double – was between 1.5C and 4.5C.

According to Prof Bengtsson’s paper, it is more likely to be 1.2C to 2.7C. The implications of the difference are huge. If the planet is warming half as fast as previously thought in response to emissions, many assumptions behind targets for reducing emissions and green energy subsidies are wrong.

The subsidies in turn have led to a significant increase in consumers’ power bills. Last week, it was revealed Environmental Research Letters had rejected his paper because it would be seized on by climate ‘sceptics’ in the media.

Established: The Global Warming Policy Foundation was set up by former Tory Chancellor Nigel Lawson and is regarded as being part of the 'sceptic camp' when it comes to climate change. Later the journal said it had rejected the paper because the reviewers questioned the paper’s methods. But another journal turned it down without it even being sent out for peer review. Prof Bengtsson says this only normally happens if the editors believe the work is ‘trivial’ or ‘unimportant’.

Prof Bengtsson, 79, is one of the world’s most eminent climate scientists. Last week he was forced to step down from the council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the sceptical think-tank set up by Lord Lawson.

.• I was victimised for challenging zealots, says Professor: Poison, plots and a battle to neuter climate change critics • Billionaires are 'scary smart' and more likely to have attended elite schools such as Harvard • Climate change scientist claims he has been forced from new job in 'McCarthy'-style witch-hunt by academics across the world

He was accused by former friends and colleagues of ‘crossing into the deniers’ camp’.

Prof Bengtsson said the pressure was so great he had feared for his health. He said he had been stunned by the ‘emotional’ reaction to his joining the GWPF.‘The way some in the climate community behaved shocked me,’ he said. ‘It was as if I had been married for many years, and then discovered my wife was a completely different person.’

Prof Bengtsson said the paper was now being considered by a third journal, after some revisions. But he had asked for his name to be to be removed in the wake of the row over the GWPF.

Is this the tipping point for climate McCarthyism?

Some climate scientists have long been warning that the planet is approaching a tipping point. Future historians may one day reflect that we reached it last week.

If they do, they won’t mean that this was when global warming became unstoppable. Instead, they’ll be pointing to the curious affair of Professor Lennart Bengtsson of Reading University as the moment that the rigid, authoritarian campaign to shut down debate on climate science and policy finally began to unravel.

For several years, this newspaper has been at the forefront of efforts to publicise the highly inconvenient truth that real world temperatures have not risen nearly as fast as computer models say they should have, thanks to the unexpected ‘pause’ in global warming which has so far lasted some 17 years. As Prof Bengtsson has now discovered, anyone who draws attention to this will be vilified and accused of ‘denying’ supposedly ‘settled’ science.

The dogma – the insistence, as Bengtsson put it yesterday, that ‘greenhouse gas emissions are leading us towards the end of the world in the not-too-distant future’ – dominates many aspects of our lives, from lessons taught in primary schools to the vast and rising ‘green’ energy subsidies on household fuel bills.

To be sure, Bengtsson’s treatment is not encouraging. As a former director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, he is one of the world’s most eminent experts.

Yet last week, he was accused of having joined the equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan and the Flat Earth Society, and of peddling ‘junk science’ – all because he accepted a place on the council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Some climate scientists have long been warning that the planet is approaching a tipping point. Future historians may one day reflect that we reached it last weekSo great was the pressure, he feared for his health, and decided to resign. The most cursory look at the GWPF’s website makes clear it does not ‘deny’ any aspect of the science of global warming, nor that this has happened in response to human activity. Its focus (as its name rather suggests) is on policy, where it has indeed been critical of the approach thus far. But for the climate enforcers, that was enough. Bengtsson said: ‘I was labelled a heretic. I felt as if I was dealing with the medieval church.’

It also emerged that a paper he co-authored, arguing that temperatures would rise by only half as much as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claims, had been rejected by a prestigious journal – after an anonymous reviewer said publishing it would be ‘harmful’ to the environmental cause, because it was bound to be reported by media sceptics.

Nevertheless, there are grounds for optimism. Perhaps it was simply that a man of Bengtsson’s stature who is still producing research at the age of 79 deserves respect, but the story was reported – not favourably, from the enforcers’ point of view – around the world. It even made the front page of The Times. Some of those who deplored the ‘climate McCarthyism’ that Bengtsson experienced, such as Prof Judith Curry of Georgia Tech in Atlanta, have received similar treatment for saying global warming may not pose the imminent threat so many want us to fear. Others, however, were from the very centre of the climate science mainstream, such as Prof Mike Hulme of King’s College, London. He condemned scientists who ‘harassed’ those with whom they disagreed until they ‘fall into line’. But if this really was a tipping point, it will be because the areas of uncertainty in climate science are simply too big to be ignored: claiming the debate is over does not make this true.

As former Nasa scientist Roy Spencer put it: ‘We might be seeing the death throes of alarmist climate science. They know they are on the ropes, and are pulling out all the stops in a last-ditch effort to shore up their crumbling storyline.’

So here’s a question. Like Bengtsson, this newspaper believes global warming is real, and caused by CO2. It’s also clear that, thus far, the computer models have exaggerated its speed. So what exactly are we and others who hold such views denying?

I'm not as old as Sec Kerry but old enough to know to quit asking what is the worst that can happen.

I'll take a shot at answering that. In the U.S. alone, pursuing economy crippling policies ostensibly about climate control has brought a zero growth economy, accelerated income inequality, left 50% of black youth out of work, 100 million working age adults out of work, turned us against each other, run up between100 and 200 trillion in unfunded liabilities, cost us our national security, forced out manufacturing and ended our run as the world's greatest economy. All that is before we enact whatever backwards steps he is now proposing.

'What's the Worst That Can Happen?'

I guess an economy something like Afghanistan where we grow poppies and answer to warlords..

I'm not as old as Sec Kerry but old enough to know to quit asking what is the worst that can happen.

I'll take a shot at answering that. In the U.S. alone, pursuing economy crippling policies ostensibly about climate control has brought a zero growth economy, accelerated income inequality, left 50% of black youth out of work, 100 million working age adults out of work, turned us against each other, run up between100 and 200 trillion in unfunded liabilities, cost us our national security, forced out manufacturing and ended our run as the world's greatest economy. All that is before we enact whatever backwards steps he is now proposing.

'What's the Worst That Can Happen?'

I guess an economy something like Afghanistan where we grow poppies and answer to warlords..

The theory on which polar bears are supposed to be endangered because their environment is becoming more benign has never been entirely clear, nor has there been data to support the claim that their populations are declining. Indeed, polar bears inhabit such remote and forbidding regions that no one has much idea how many of them there are. But no matter. Polar bears are cuddly–from a distance, anyway–and so they served the hoaxers’ purpose.

Like so much of the global warming fraud, the polar bear theme has unraveled. Thomas Lifson has the latest. A prominent advocate for the endangered polar bear theory has just admitted to an actual scientist that he made the whole thing up:

[P]olar bear scientist Dr. Susan Crockford…publishes the website Polar Bear Science. In it she documents how a scientist responsible for an alarmist lowball estimate of polar bear population is backing away from numbers that she has been questioning:

Last week (May 22), I received an unsolicited email from Dr. Dag Vongraven, the current chairman of the IUCN [International Union for the Conservation of Nature – TL] Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG).

The email from Vongraven began this way:

Dr. Crockford

Below you’ll find a footnote that will accompany a total polar bear population size range in the circumpolar polar bear action plan that we are currently drafting together with the Parties to the 1973 Agreement. This might keep you blogging for a day or two. [my bold]

It appears the PBSG have come to the realization that public outrage (or just confusion) is brewing over their global population estimates and some damage control is perhaps called for. Their solution — bury a statement of clarification within their next official missive….

The statement of clarification is an Emily Litella classic: oops, never mind!

Here is the statement that the PBSG proposes to insert as a footnote in their forthcoming Circumpolar Polar Bear Action Plan draft:“As part of past status reports, the PBSG has traditionally estimated a range for the total number of polar bears in the circumpolar Arctic. Since 2005, this range has been 20-25,000. It is important to realize that this range never has been an estimate of total abundance in a scientific sense, but simply a qualified guess given to satisfy public demand. It is also important to note that even though we have scientifically valid estimates for a majority of the subpopulations, some are dated. Furthermore, there are no abundance estimates for the Arctic Basin, East Greenland, and the Russian subpopulations. Consequently, there is either no, or only rudimentary, knowledge to support guesses about the possible abundance of polar bears in approximately half the areas they occupy. Thus, the range given for total global population should be viewed with great caution as it cannot be used to assess population trend over the long term.” [my bold]

I love that phrase, “in a scientific sense.” Nothing about the claims made by the global warming hysterics should be taken in a scientific sense.

For a more comprehensive review of the polar bear fraud, along with many other topics, check out the Congressional testimony of Daniel Botkin, Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology at UC Santa Barbara, President of The Center for The Study of The Environment, and author of Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the 21st Century and the textbook Environmental Science:

Some of the [IPCC's 2014 report's] conclusions are the opposite of those given in articles cited in defense of those conclusions.

For example, the IPCC 2014 Terrestrial Ecosystem Report states that “there is medium confidence that rapid change in the Arctic is affecting its animals. For example, seven of 19 subpopulations of the polar bear are declining in number” citing in support of this an article by Vongraven and Richardson, 2011. That report states the contrary, that the “decline” is an illusion.

In addition, I have sought the available counts of the 19 subpopulations. Of these, only three have been counted twice; the rest have been counted once. Thus no rate of changes in the populations can be determined. The first count was done in 1986 for one subpopulation.

The U. S. Marine Mammal Commission, charged with the conservation of this species, acknowledges “Accurate estimates of the current and historic sizes of polar bear stocks are difficult to obtain for several reasons–the species‘ inaccessible habitat, the movement of bears across international boundaries, and the costs of conducting surveys.”

According to Dr. Susan Crockford, “out of the 13 populations for which some kind of data exist, five populations are now classified by the PBSG [IUCN/SSC Polar Bear Specialist Group] as ‘stable’ (two more than 2009), one is still increasing, and three have been upgraded from ‘declining’ to ‘data deficient’. . . . That leaves four that are still considered ‘declining’‐ two of those judgments are based primarily on concerns of overhunting, and one is based on a statistically insignificant decline that may not be valid and is being reassessed (and really should have been upgraded to ‘data deficient’). That leaves only one population – Western Hudson Bay – where PBSG biologists tenaciously blame global warming for all changes to polar bear biology, and even then, the data supporting that conclusion is still not available.”

To anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the Earth’s history, the suggestion that polar bears are threatened by a change in the planet’s average temperature of a degree or two–or five or six, if we pretend that the climateers’ models have any scientific basis–is ludicrous. Polar bears have been around, I suppose, for millions of years. Yet, in just the last 450,000 years–practically the blink of an eye–polar bears have lived through climate changes far more drastic than anything now predicted by the fraudsters:

I think that to the extent the climate hysterics are able to fool anyone, it is largely because most people have no idea of the natural variability of the Earth’s climate.

if the climateers’ disaster scenarios are correct, then Germany’s investment of $100 billion in solar power schemes “can only reduce the onset of Global Warming by a matter of about 37 hours by the year 2100.” A similar calculation would show the futility of the Obama administration’s “green” initiatives.

Chen created up to 130 fake email accounts of "assumed and fabricated identities" that created a "peer review and citation ring." In other words, it appears that he suggested his own fake identities to the journal as reviewers of his papers.

That isn't very different than the IPCC cartel working behind the scenes to cherry pick studies and data, hand pick reviewers and block out dissent.

Surface temperatures in 2013 compared to average temperatures since 1981.

If global warming could be compared to middle-age weight gain, then Earth is growing a boomer belly, according to a newly released report on the state of the global climate.

Climate data show that global temperatures in 2013 continued their long-term rising trend. In fact, 2013 was somewhere between the second- and sixth-hottest year on record for the planet since record keeping began in 1880, according to the climate report, released Thursday (July 17) by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). (Four groups of scientists, who rely on slightly different methods to calculate global surface temperatures, ranked 2013 slightly differently compared with other years.)

The annual State of the Climate report compiles climate and weather data from around the world and is reviewed by 425 climate scientists from 57 countries. The report can be viewed online.

"You can think of it as an annual checkup on the planet," said Kathryn Sullivan, NOAA administrator.

And the checkup results show the planet ranged well outside of normal levels in 2013, hitting new records for greenhouse gases, Arctic heat, warm ocean temperatures and rising sea levels.

"The climate is changing more rapidly in today's world than at any time in modern civilization," said Thomas Karl, director of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. "If we look at it like we're trying to maintain an ideal weight, then we're continuing to see ourselves put more weight on from year to year," he said.

Climate scientists blame rising levels of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere for the planet's changing climate. The levels of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii hit 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in 2013. The worldwide average reached 395.3 ppm, a 2.8 ppm increase from 2012, NOAA reports. (Parts per million denotes the volume of a gas in the air; in this case, for every 1 million air molecules, 400 are carbon dioxide.) [In Images: Extreme Weather Around the World]

"The major greenhouse gases all reached new record high values in 2013," said Jessica Blunden, a climate scientist with ERT, Inc., and a NOAA contractor who helped write the report.

Most parts of the planet experienced above-average annual temperatures in 2013, NOAA officials said. Australia experienced its warmest year on record, while Argentina had its second warmest and New Zealand its third warmest. There was a new high-temperature record set at the South Pole, of minus 53 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 47 degrees Celsius).

Here are the highlights from the report:Sea level continued rising: Boosted by warm Pacific Ocean temperatures (which causes water to expand) and melting ice sheets, sea level rose 0.15 inches (3.8 millimeters), on par with the long-term trend of 0.13 inches (3.2 mm) per year over the past 20 years. Antarctic sea ice hit another record high: On October 1, Antarctic sea ice covered 7.56 million square miles (19.5 million square kilometers). This beats the old record set in 2012 by 0.7 percent. However, even though the Antarctic sea ice is growing, the continent's land-based glaciers continued to melt and shrink.Arctic sea ice low: The Arctic sea ice extent was the sixth lowest since satellite observations began in 1979. The sea ice extent is declining by about 14 percent per decade.Extreme weather: Deadly Super Typhoon Haiyan had the highest wind speed ever recorded for a tropical cyclone, with one-minute sustained winds reaching 196 mph (315 km/h). Flooding in central Europe caused billions of dollars in damage and killed 24 people.Melting permafrost: For the second year in a row, record high temperatures were measured in permafrost on the North Slope of Alaska and in the Brooks Range. Permafrost is frozen ground underneath the Earth's surface. The temperatures were recorded more than 60 feet (20 meters) deep.Arctic heat: Temperatures over land are rising faster in the Arctic than in other regions of the planet. Fairbanks, Alaska, had a record 36 days with temperatures at 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius) or warmer. However, Greenland had a cooler than average summer.Warm seas: Sea surface temperatures for 2013 were among the 10 warmest on record. Temperatures in the North Pacific hit a record high in 2013.

—both prominent figures in the field, neither known as a climate “skeptic”—that is likely to make waves (pun intended). This sentence in particular appears significant:

Interpretation requires close attention to the long memory of the deep ocean, and implying that meteorological forcing of decades to thousands of years ago should still be producing trend-like changes in abyssal heat content.

In other words, it would not be unfair to suggest that ocean trends might have much longer-term causes than the emissions from your SUV alone.

And there’s this possibly inconvenient fact:

Parts of the deeper ocean, below 3600 m, show cooling.

And on p. 22 of the complete manuscript, the authors say this:

Direct determination of changes in oceanic heat content over the last 20 years are not in conflict with estimates of the radiative forcing, but the uncertainties remain too large to rationalize e.g., the apparent “pause” in warming.

I noticed a flock of birds heading south a few days ago. Yesterday on the drive home I saw birds massing on the telephone wires. Normally we see that only when they are moving South. I don't recall the beginning of the migration in mid-AUGUST!

Lizards, which are amniote vertebrates like humans, are able to lose and regenerate a functional tail. Understanding the molecular basis of this process would advance regenerative approaches in amniotes, including humans. We have carried out the first transcriptomic analysis of tail regeneration in a lizard, the green anole Anolis carolinensis, which revealed 326 differentially expressed genes activating multiple developmental and repair mechanisms. Specifically, genes involved in wound response, hormonal regulation, musculoskeletal development, and the Wnt and MAPK/FGF pathways were differentially expressed along the regenerating tail axis. Furthermore, we identified 2 microRNA precursor families, 22 unclassified non-coding RNAs, and 3 novel protein-coding genes significantly enriched in the regenerating tail. However, high levels of progenitor/stem cell markers were not observed in any region of the regenerating tail. Furthermore, we observed multiple tissue-type specific clusters of proliferating cells along the regenerating tail, not localized to the tail tip. These findings predict a different mechanism of regeneration in the lizard than the blastema model described in the salamander and the zebrafish, which are anamniote vertebrates. Thus, lizard tail regrowth involves the activation of conserved developmental and wound response pathways, which are potential targets for regenerative medical therapies.

On Sept. 23 the United Nations will host a party for world leaders in New York to pledge urgent action against climate change. Yet leaders from China, India and Germany have already announced that they won’t attend the summit and others are likely to follow, leaving President Obama looking a bit lonely. Could it be that they no longer regard it as an urgent threat that some time later in this century the air may get a bit warmer?

In effect, this is all that’s left of the global-warming emergency the U.N. declared in its first report on the subject in 1990. The U.N. no longer claims that there will be dangerous or rapid climate change in the next two decades. Last September, between the second and final draft of its fifth assessment report, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change quietly downgraded the warming it expected in the 30 years following 1995, to about 0.5 degrees Celsius from 0.7 (or, in Fahrenheit, to about 0.9 degrees, from 1.3).

Even that is likely to be too high. The climate-research establishment has finally admitted openly what skeptic scientists have been saying for nearly a decade: Global warming has stopped since shortly before this century began.

First the climate-research establishment denied that a pause existed, noting that if there was a pause, it would invalidate their theories. Now they say there is a pause (or “hiatus”), but that it doesn’t after all invalidate their theories.

Alas, their explanations have made their predicament worse by implying that man-made climate change is so slow and tentative that it can be easily overwhelmed by natural variation in temperature—a possibility that they had previously all but ruled out.

When the climate scientist and geologist Bob Carter of James Cook University in Australia wrote an article in 2006 saying that there had been no global warming since 1998 according to the most widely used measure of average global air temperatures, there was an outcry. A year later, when David Whitehouse of the Global Warming Policy Foundation in London made the same point, the environmentalist and journalist Mark Lynas said in the New Statesman that Mr. Whitehouse was “wrong, completely wrong,” and was “deliberately, or otherwise, misleading the public.”We know now that it was Mr. Lynas who was wrong. Two years before Mr. Whitehouse’s article, climate scientists were already admitting in emails among themselves that there had been no warming since the late 1990s. “The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998,” wrote Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia in Britain in 2005. He went on: “Okay it has but it is only seven years of data and it isn’t statistically significant.”

If the pause lasted 15 years, they conceded, then it would be so significant that it would invalidate the climate-change models upon which policy was being built. A report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) written in 2008 made this clear: “The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more.”

Well, the pause has now lasted for 16, 19 or 26 years—depending on whether you choose the surface temperature record or one of two satellite records of the lower atmosphere. That’s according to a new statisticalcalculation by Ross McKitrick, a professor of economics at the University of Guelph in Canada.

It has been roughly two decades since there was a trend in temperature significantly different from zero. The burst of warming that preceded the millennium lasted about 20 years and was preceded by 30 years of slight cooling after 1940. (more at link)

By the way, I have a number of books by Matt Ridley, the author of that piece-- including "Nature via Nuture", and "The Red Queen". His area of science is evolutionary biology. He has my great respect.

However, it does nothing of the sort. It's all bluster and careful misdirection, and contradicts nothing in my article, let alone producing evidence of lies. The sheer inaccuracy of the riposte in its descriptions of what I said or what I think are breathtaking, as are its failure to address any of the issues I raise, let alone contradict them. I had respect for Jeffrey Sachs as a scholar before reading this. Here are some key passages:

"Ridley's "smoking gun" is a paper last week in Science Magazine by two scientists Xianyao Chen and Ka-Kit Tung . . ."

Notice the quote marks around "smoking gun," implying that I used the phrase. I did not. In any case, the Chen and Tung paper was only one of the pieces of evidence I cited.

I said nothing of the sort and I believe nothing of the sort. Chen and Tung is about currents in the Atlantic, not about "all climate science"!

"The Wall Street Journal editors don't give a hoot about the nonsense they publish if it serves their cause of fighting measures to limit human-induced climate change. If they had simply gone online to read the actual paper, they would have found that the paper's conclusions are the very opposite of Ridley's."

In his writing the real Mr. Sachs does not often use phrases like "don't give a hoot."

In any case, he's plain wrong about the contradiction. The quote I gave from the press release is accurate. And I have read the paper and can assure Mr. "Sachs" that its conclusions are not the opposite of what I have said. As further confirmation, how about asking the paper's lead author himself? This is what he wrote to Prof. Judith Curry in response to her questions:

"Dear Judy,

The argument on the roughly 50-50 attribution of the forced vs unforced warming for the last two and half decades of the 20th century is actually quite simple. If one is blaming internal variability for canceling out the anthropogenically forced warming during the current hiatus, one must admit that the former is not negligible compared to the latter, and the two are probably roughly of the same magnitude. Then when the internal cycle is of the different sign in the latter part of the 20th century, it must have added to the forced response. Assuming the rate of forced warming has not changed during the period concerned, then the two combined must be roughly twice the forced warming during the last two and half decades of the 20th century."

In other words, as I said, the warming of 1975-2000 was only half caused by man-made emissions and half by natural causes, according to their conclusions, and natural causes were enough to cancel man-made forcing in the years after 2000.

To continue with the "Sachs" article:

"First, the paper makes perfectly clear that the Earth is warming in line with standard climate science, and that the Earth's warming is unabated in recent years. In the scientific lingo of the paper (it's very first line, so Ridley didn't have far to read!), "Increasing anthropogenic greenhouse-gas-emissions perturb Earth's radiative equilibrium, leading to a persistent imbalance at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) despite some long-wave radiative adjustment." In short, we humans are filling the atmosphere with carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel use, and we are warming the planet."

Mr. "Sachs" did not have far to read in my own article to find this is in complete agreement with what I wrote also:

"I've long thought that man-made carbon-dioxide emissions will raise global temperatures, but that this effect will not be amplified much by feedbacks from extra water vapor and clouds, so the world will probably be only a bit more than one degree Celsius warmer in 2100 than today."

Instead of using words like "unabated" why not give numbers? I did.

The warming during 1975-2000, even if you cherry-pick the end points, was about 0.4 degrees C if you average the five main global data sets, and if half of that was natural, then man-made forcing was going at the rate of less than 1 degree per century, rather less than what I said.

"Second, the total warming is distributed between the land and ocean surface on the one hand and the ocean deep water on the other. The total rise of ocean heat content has continued unabated, while the proportion of heat absorbed at the surface and in the deeper ocean varies over time. Again, in the scientific lingo of the paper, "[T]his forced total OHC [ocean heat content] should be increasing monotonically over longer periods even through the current period of slowed warming. In fact, that expectation is verified by observation . . . " In other words, the ocean has continued to warm in line with predictions of just such a phenomenon seen in climate models."

This is highly misleading. The quote from the paper does not contradict me at all. In any case, remember, the data on ocean heat content is highly ambiguous. As Judith Curry summarized it recently:

"The main issue of interest is to what extent can ocean heat sequestration explain the hiatus since 1998. The only data set that appears to provide support for ocean sequestration is the ocean reanalysis, with the Palmer and Domingues 0-700 m OHC climatology providing support for continued warming in the upper ocean.

All in all, I don't see a very convincing case for deep ocean sequestration of heat. And even if the heat from surface heating of the ocean did make it into the deep ocean, presumably the only way for this to happen involves mixing (rather than adiabatic processes), so it is very difficult to imagine how this heat could reappear at the surface in light of the 2nd law of thermodynamics."

Back to the "Sachs" article:

"Third, it is the 'vertical distribution' of the warming, between the surface and deep water, which affects the warming observed on land and at the sea surface. The point of the paper is that the allocation of the warming vertically varies over time, sometimes warming the surface rapidly, other times warming the deeper ocean to a great extent and the surface water less rapidly. According to the paper, the period of the late 20th century was a period in which the surface was warmed relative to the deeper ocean. The period since 2000 is the opposite, with more warming of the deeper ocean. How do the scientists know? They measure the ocean temperature at varying depths with a sophisticated system of 'Argo profiling floats,' which periodically dive into the ocean depths to take temperature readings and resurface to transmit them to the data centers."

I have no problem with this paragraph, which merely reiterates what I said about the Chen and Tung paper, with a bit more detail about the Argo floats, etc. It finds no evidence of my misrepresentation, let alone total misrepresentation.

"So, what is Ridley's 'smoking gun' when you strip away his absurd version of the paper? It goes like this. The Earth is continuing to warm just as greenhouse gas theory holds."

Check, I agree—over the long term and slowly, just as greenhouse gas theory holds. But the atmosphere is not continuing to warm right now.

"The warming heats the land and the ocean. The ocean distributes some of the warming to the surface waters and some to the deeper waters, depending on the complex circulation of ocean waters."

Check. Could not have said it better myself, though remember this is still speculation and was not predicted.

"The shares of warming of the surface and deeper ocean vary over time, in fluctuations that can last a few years or a few decades."

Check.

Where's the contradiction with what I wrote? There is none. If Mr. "Sachs" had bothered to read my article properly, he would find that his description of what is happening is pretty well exactly the same as mine. Except that he gives no numbers. What I did was to show that if Chen and Tung are right, and half the warming in the last part of the last century was natural, then the "rapid" warming of those three decades was still too slow for the predictions made by the models. It will if it resumes give us a not very alarming future. And if it does not resume for some time, as Chen and Tung speculate that it might not, then the future is even less alarming.

And no, again, I did not use the phrase "smoking gun." I used several other arguments, all of which Mr. "Sachs" fails to address at all, so presumably he agrees that there has been a "pause," that it was denied for many years by the climate establishment, that there was general agreement among them that a pause of more than 15 years would invalidate their models, and so on.

He goes on:

"If the surface warming is somewhat less in recent years than in the last part of the 20th century, is that reason for complacency? Hardly. The warming is continuing, and the consequences of our current trajectory will be devastating unless greenhouse gas emissions (mainly carbon dioxide) are stopped during this century. As Chen and Tung conclude in their Science paper, 'When the internal variability [of the ocean] that is responsible for the current hiatus [in warming] switches sign, as it inevitably will, another episode of accelerated global warming should ensue.' "

I hardly think it was complacent of me to ask world leaders to address the much more urgent issues of war, terror, disease, poverty, habitat loss and the 1.3 billion people with no electricity.

The only disagreement is whether future warming will be "devastating," and that is a prediction not an empirical fact. I cannot yet be "wrong" about it.

When will Mr. "Sachs" get around to including a number? He surely cannot be under the impression that lukewarmers like me think there is no greenhouse effect? He surely knows that the argument is not about whether there is warming, but how fast.

And where did I lie, or misrepresent? Where did he "destroy" me, pray? He did not.

Mr. "Sachs," who is usually a careful academic, has published a lot of wild accusations against me and "totally" (his word) failed to stand them up. How did this come about? Perhaps, being a busy man, he asked somebody else to ghost-write much of the piece for him and did not check it very thoroughly. Perhaps he wrote it himself. Either way, no problem, a quick tweet apologising to me and admitting that nothing in his article contradicts anything in mine, that we merely disagree on the predictions of dangerous warming, and I will consider the matter closed.

I published most of this riposte to Mr. Sachs's article on my blog post on Sunday and drew his attention to it on Twitter.

Actually, the word the scientists use is "rapid" warming and they use it also to describe the warming of the 1980s and 1990s, which as I showed was not nearly as rapid as predicted by the models. So, even when the Atlantic currents are boosting the man-made warming, it is not as fast as the models predict.

Clearly Mr. Sachs and I disagree about how dangerous man-made global warming is likely to be in the future. I think all the explanations for the pause, including the Chen and Tung one, only make my case stronger that man-made warming is not being enhanced by feedbacks and is proceeding according to the greenhouse effect of CO2 alone. I may of course be wrong. But it is ludicrous, nasty and false to accuse me of lying or "totally misrepresenting the science." I have asked Mr. Sachs to withdraw the charges more than once now on Twitter. He has refused to do so, though he has been tweeting freely during the time.

Soon after my article was published, another peer-reviewed paper appeared in the Journal Nature Climate Change, about as mainstream a climate science publication as you can find. It is entitled: "Climate model simulations of the observed early-2000s hiatus of global warming." The respected commentator and academic Roger Pielke Jr. tweeted:

"Can't wait to see ‪@JeffDSachs eviscerate this paper, no doubt by more of Murdoch's lying henchmen"

Anecdotal stories of warming or cooling prove nothing and I will quit citing isolated examples of unusual cold and cooling as soon as the warming alarmists stop citing individual examples of warmth. ---------------------------------------------------Rapid City sees earliest snowfall since 1888, Sept 11, 2014http://www.argusleader.com/story/news/crime/2014/09/11/inches-possible-black-hills/15434275/---------------------------------------------------Posted previously on Environmental Issues:the Arctic has added ice area twice the size of Alaska over the last 2 years and increased the mass, thickness and density in the rest of it. http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1118.msg83423#msg83423--------------------------------------------------=

Here is an example of global warming: When a freezer loses power, we don't find that some ice cube trays are melting while others that were liquid are freezing. It may warm unevenly, but it all warms.

The man-made cause of warming hinges on the underlying assumption that the earth is still warming, warming significantly, warming more than the margin of error, warming at a faster rate than before the alleged cause started and more that it would be otherwise.

Watts up with Mann?Sep 26, 2014Climate: ScepticsThis is a guest post by Katabasis.

It’s been an interesting few days, having attended both the Cook and Mann talks and have some valuable meetings (many for the first time) with other climate sceptics. I wanted to share a perspective that deviates somewhat from what appears to be an emerging – er – ‘consensus’ among a number of the people I had the pleasure to spend time with over the last week or so. There has been discussion in person, here and over at WUWT regarding the pursuit of some kind of rapprochement with the mainstream of climate science and climate scientists. A significant feature of the conversation thus far appears to be concern over the fractious nature of the debate, especially online. In particular there have been concerns raised regarding the effect on, and perception of, sceptics more generally as a result of the more angry and impassioned amongst us.

I want to offer something of a counterpoint. I want to, instead, make a few points in defence of angry sceptics.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sympathetic to the arguments made thus far in favour of maintaining calm, polite discourse. However, I think it’s important to remember that you can’t control other people’s reactions – and that’s where most of the anger resides, anger in response to perceived provocations. Moreover I don’t think the anger is going to let up any time soon, even if some of us ‘angry sceptics’ mellow somewhat – new sceptics are joining the fold every day, and many of them are pissed off from the moment they’ve ‘turned’ to climate realism.

Why?

Let’s review the two Cabot Institute talks. First we had Cook repackaging his “97% consensus” propaganda for the hapless Bristol audience. I say ‘hapless’ because at no point in his presentation was there even the slightest acknowledgement that his work – and the prior efforts that had inspired it – had come under such severe and comprehensive criticism that it was holed below the waterline. If one of my papers had received that kind of criticism I think I would have been embarrassed to even mention it in public, never mind carry out high profile presentations of it, hoping that mere repetition of memes would carry me through.

As I mentioned over at WUWT,[1] I found the whole presentation highly offensive. Cook continues the proud tradition of the ‘team’ where they paint a cartoon image of a sceptic in crayon on the wall and then go through a clown-dancing performance of `dialogue' with the gurning visage of primary colours they’ve splattered in front of them. Just the criticisms and points Cook received in the Q & A afterwards should have shattered that image of ‘sceptics’ as defined by the Skeptical Séance team for the undecided in the audience. Or at least one would hope. His presentation was largely fact free drivel and assertion that his research was right. It was the classic ‘team’ bait and switch of asserting an authoritative consensus over a modest area (the ‘basic physics’ of CO2) and then arguing through direct implication that this applied to an astronomically wider domain (catastrophic outcomes). This is despite his work having been comprehensively monstered by José Duarte[2] and many others. I even cited Duarte’s work in my own question to Cook, highlighting the inclusion of numerous, ridiculously inappropriate, papers in the measure of the ‘consensus’. A point which, like all of the others, he airily dismissed whilst going on to trail the politician’s path of answering the question he would have preferred you had asked.

Then there was Mann. There has already been significant commenting here and elsewhere regarding the bizarrely short Q and A at the end. James Delingpole[3] has noted that Mann even posted about it on Facebook. As I noted in the comments, Mann and his sychophants are backslapping eachother over how it `speaks volumes', that `there were no questions at all from the climate change denier contingent that supposedly had come out in force'. There weren’t many hands up it is true, but I know for sure that mine and Barry’s were two of them. I noticed that Mann had also taken the liberty of deleting Barry’s perfectly polite and reasonable replies on that thread.

The primary thrust of Mann’s talk, prior to slating as many perceived enemies as he could, was ‘going large’ on the bait and switch I mentioned above. He even used an identical slide to Cook on the `many lines of evidence' that support AGW. He emphasised the venerability of the ‘basic science’ and then machine gunned the audience with imagery of extreme weather. Every single damn point he made about extreme weather from then on in, as far as I can tell, is unsupported by AR5. And yet the audience lapped it up. There must have been dozens of academics in the audience who just swallowed it uncritically. There was no mention of the ‘hiatus’ (his x axis stopped shortly after the year 2000 on temperature graphs); Cook on the other hand explicitly denied it using the famous Sceptical Séance ‘escalator graph'.[4]. This is despite the fact that the ‘hiatus’ is now a major topic of discussion in the ‘mainstream’ of climate science – I can verify this personally as it was brought up regularly by the IPCC scientists present at the ‘RSclimate’ event last year.[5]

Cook, Mann and many of the other members of ‘the team’ are wilfully deceptive. They should have been laughed off the stage, not applauded. I’m not willing to accept the ‘Noble cause corruption’ narrative and neither, it seems, are some others. This isn’t just individual failure, it’s institutional. And that’s where it really sticks in the craw for me. And it drives much of my anger, as well as that of the people who I have successfully introduced to climate scepticism/realism.

The wellspring of that anger deserves proper articulation. There’s a quote attributed to Martin Luther King that I have always liked that is apposite:

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

If any of those reading consider themselves part of the ‘climate mainstream’, then I urge you to meditate on the above carefully when reading what follows as it applies to you on several levels.

When I am introducing someone to the sceptical range of views an exercise I often use is to give them a link to the IPCC WG1 report (now AR5, previously I linked them to AR4). I then invite them to pick three chapters at random – any three whatsoever (other than the Summary for Policymakers (SPM)) – and skim them (or read them in full if they have the time) and come back to me with their impressions. I experience the same response every time and indeed, it matches my own. Reading the report’s individual chapters (sans the SPM), one comes away with the impression of a scholarly, ponderous document. Lots of caveats, uncertainties, doubts, gaps and so on are clearly articulated. In short, it is what one generally expects from academic output. Then the anger flows in. It is a painfully sharp contrast to the mainstream narratives. Within those there’s disaster lurking at any moment, around every corner. It’s always ‘worse than we thought’. The climate science establishment are unanimous in agreeing that thermageddon is imminent – they’re 95% certain, in fact! About every aspect of the topic!

At this point the brakes screech. The red lights start flashing. As I get older each year, the people I introduce to sceptical books, blogs and insights become ever younger. They move ever closer to that group of young men and women just entering adulthood who have not seen global warming for their entire lives. Yet they’ve been indoctrinated right from the very start. Many come out of our education fearful for the future, as our host has amply demonstrated.[6]

They are told incessantly that the world is dying, there isn’t much hope without urgent and extreme action, and it’s all their fault for living with some creature comforts. We’re drowning in something, but it isn’t rising sea levels. It’s prognostications of doom in a legion of screaming litanies that continually fail to occur as advertised. Why hasn’t action been taken? It’s those evil ‘deniers’ and their tobacco/oil/[insert idiocy] industry backing spreading doubt and preventing action. Except it isn’t. The ‘mainstream’ of climate science is chock full of doubts, including about the hysterical prophecies of the reverend Al Gore and sychophants. The heart rate rises, respiration increases. A state of low level adrenal emergency is entered. Why didn’t they tell us? Why have our school teachers, our media, our parents, our climate science establishment not reined in the irresponsible activist-scientists and their supporters in advocate groups? Angry? You bet.

And that’s just among the general public. What of those of us who have, or have had, a continuing relationship with academia? Some of the reactions I’ve witnessed there have eclipsed even my white hot reaction.

Of my friends and family who take an interest in sincere discussion on these issues, those with a more political bent I sent to Pointman’s blog.[7] Those of a more philosophical to Ben Pile’s.[8] For those of my friends pursuing academic careers however, I sent them to Duarte’s holdout. Duarte does two things particularly well – he provides a comprehensive and scholarly critique of recent Cook and Lewandowsky offerings. He also proffers a very particular kind of outrage. That of the academic betrayed.

I felt exactly the same when I turned fully to climate scepticism/realism. As I discussed this week with Barry Woods and Richard Drake, I was working in a lab at the time. I still regarded the scientific and academic establishments as the last hold out for hope. It didn’t matter that political and economic wrangling was hopelessly fragged. Science and the quest for an ever clearer insight into the ways of the world, led by paragons of integrity, would see us through. Or so I naively believed. Discovering that a substantive area of science had let itself be presented in such a monstrous form in the public eye was an extremely bitter pill to swallow indeed.

I discovered that being a climate sceptic in the ivory towers was dangerous. It’s why I maintain a veneer of pseudonymity still. I can’t express the anger or bitterness at the sense of extreme betrayal in the written word, though I’ve often burst my top with expletives on the subject online and off. To find that the bladder bursting conniptions of our literati concerning our imminent doom as a result of our carbon sins is in fact an exaggeration of the facts off the scale even when compared to the famous UK ‘dodgy dossier’ on Iraq was, for a budding academic, the worst betrayal.

I didn’t sign up for this. Duarte didn’t sign up for this. Nor did any of my friends and colleagues in my age group who planned a career either in, or closely related to academia. The covenant has been broken. It’s precisely this kind of hyperbole that they should exist in order to rein in, to let cooler heads prevail. But there’s no ponderous pontification here, the overheated chicken littles run the roost whilst the ‘mainstream’ of climate science appears to sit comfortably, keeping eggs warm for the future. I’ve met a few of you in person now. You tell me, quietly, that you don’t agree with the hysteria at all, and that it’s clear from your published work.

Not good enough.

Some of you may remember from my report on the ‘RSclimate’ event that I challenged Mat Collins on this issue. That’s the same Mat Collins who is the Joint Met Office Chair in Climate Change. When I asked why he and others didn’t attempt to rein in the hysterics, who do not represent what the IPCC actually says, he said it wasn’t his responsibility. More recently, at the Walker Institute annual lecture, on climate change communication, myself and Barry Woods questioned none other than the government’s chief scientific adviser himself, Mark Walport. I put it to him that AR5 did not support catastrophic conclusions with any certainty. He responded that when he said climate change was going to be ‘bad’ he did not mean ‘catastrophic’. He failed to provide a definition of ‘bad’. This was the keynote lecture for a climate change communication outfit. If he can’t communicate something so important that is so very easily misconstrued into the worst case scenario to someone like myself who is relatively well informed on the topic, what hope the general public?

In short, there seems to be no stomach amongst the ‘mainstream’ climate establishment to do anything very much to counter the incredibly pernicious effect of our Cooks, Manns, Lewandowskys and Hansens. You don’t seem to realise that the public already lumps all of you together and some of us who know better are at the end of their tether in trying to maintain that distinction. The effort is a law of diminishing returns – why should we attempt to lift you out of a hole you continue to keep digging deeper? History won’t care what your inscrutable paywalled article actually said. Neither will the general public. They’ll care that you didn’t speak out when you should have. That you allowed everyone who raised objections be painted as part of some shady conspiracy funded by billions in filthy lucre. That you allowed their children to be terrified by a vision of monstrous and hopeless futures. The anger is going to continue to grow until a significant portion of the climate mainstream steps up to the plate, and would be well advised to do so before the leash well and truly snaps.

Whilst I’m loathe to use a Socialist Worker Party slogan here, this one is entirely apt:

I recall seeing pictures of massive herds of walruses before so I found this:

Myth Debunked: Arctic Walrus Beachings Are Nothing New Replay Myth Debunked: Arctic Walrus Beachings Are Nothing NewDaily CallerEnvironmentalists have been trying to link reports about the beaching of a 35,000-strong walrus herd to global warming, which they say is melting the polar ice caps. Margaret Williams, head of the World Wildlife Fund’s Arctic program, says "The massive concentration of walruses onshore,when they should be scattered broadly in ice-covered waters—is just one example of the impacts of climate change on the distribution of marine species in the... Share VideoLink & EmbedAt Paris Motor Show, Carmakers Hope to ImpressEnvironmentalists have been trying to link reports about the beaching of a 35,000-strong walrus herd to global warming, which they say is melting the polar ice caps. Margaret Williams, head of the World Wildlife Fund’s Arctic program, says "The massive concentration of walruses onshore,when they should be scattered broadly in ice-covered waters—is just one example of the impacts of climate change on the distribution of marine species in the Arctic." But is global warming really driving walrus herds to Alaska’s shoreline? Zoologist Susan Crockford says there are many recorded mass walrus beachings in history going back at least 45 years, when Arctic sea ice extent was much greater than it is now.??

Environmentalists have been trying to link reports about the beaching of a 35,000-strong walrus herd to global warming, which they say is melting the polar ice caps.

“The massive concentration of walruses onshore—when they should be scattered broadly in ice-covered waters—is just one example of the impacts of climate change on the distribution of marine species in the Arctic,” Margaret Williams, head of the World Wildlife Fund’s Arctic program, said.

But is global warming really driving walrus herds to Alaska’s shoreline? Zoologist Susan Crockford says there are many recorded mass walrus beachings in history going back at least 45 years — when Arctic sea ice extent was much greater than it is now.

“At least two documented incidents like this have occurred in the recent past: one in 1978, on St. Lawrence Island and the associated Punuk Islands and the other in 1972, on Wrangell Island,” Crockford wrote on her blog Polarbearscience.com. “These events included mass mortality associated with very large herds.”

Crockford cites a 1980 study by University of Alaska scientists which found that a “conservative estimate of the area covered by the animals is at least 2 km… which suggests the possibility that about 35 000… walruses had hauled out there” in autumn of 1978. The study added that “Eskimos believe that it was used in this case as an alternative to the Punuk Islands, which may have been fully occupied at the time.”

“If all of the areas had been occupied at one time, it is conceivable that some 50,000 to 60,000 walruses were on shore on the Punuk Islands sometime during the late autumn of 1978,” the study continued, adding that “between 1930 and 1932 an unusually large number of walruses hauled out in autumn on the Punuk Islands… sufficient to cover the southwestern peninsula of the North Island and most of the Middle Island as well.”

Mamas LatinasKourtney Kardashian's Baby Gender Reportedly Revealed -- She's Having a ...Mamas LatinasBills.comAn Extremely Brilliant Way to Pay Off MortgagesBills.comWe WorkHow to email like a bossWe WorkStirring DailyKate Middleton's Bizarre Behavior at Event Gets Everyone Talking Stirring Dailyby Taboolaby TaboolaSponsored LinksSponsored LinksPromoted LinksPromoted LinksThe Alaska Dispatch News reports that the beaching of 35,000 walruses in Northwest Alaska “is one of the biggest onshore gatherings of the animals documented.” Walruses use the sea ice to rest on in between dives for fish.

Ecologist Chadwick Jay who heads up the U.S. Geological Survey’s Pacific walrus research program told ADN melting ice has forced these walruses to come ashore to rest between hunts. Jay told ADN that in “only two of the last eight years has the Chukchi had enough floating ice to provide resting spots that allowed walruses to avoid having to swim to shore.”

Beachings can be dangerous for a herd as smaller females and pups might get crushed underneath the press of bigger walruses and because beachings generally occur far from prime feeding grounds. ADN reports that there have no signs of major problems yet, but 36 walruses were reported dead.

“The sharp decline of Arctic sea ice over the last decade means major changes for wildlife and communities alike,” said WWF’s Williams. “Today’s news about the sea ice minimum is yet another reminder of the urgent need to ratchet down global greenhouse gas emissions—the main human factor driving massive climate change.”

Arctic sea ice extent is near its yearly low, now hitting 1.91 million square miles, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center — the sixth lowest extent since satellite records began in 1979.

But regardless of high or low sea ice levels, walruses have always seemed to beach themselves, according to Crockford.

“As you can see, this is blatant nonsense and those who support or encourage this interpretation are misinforming the public,” she said. “Walrus numbers are up considerably from the 1960s, although they are notoriously difficult to count. Population sizes may fluctuate for a number of reasons that have little to do with the low ice levels.”

Crockford notes that recent episodes of mass walrus beachings — which occurred in 2009, 2011 and 2014 — did not coincide with the lowest levels of Arctic summer sea ice. These lowest levels occurred in 2007 and 2012.

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New term: ‘Grubering’ and how it applies to Climate AlarmismGuest Blogger / 4 hours ago November 16, 2014WUWT reader M. Paul writes: Sometimes a new word emerges that neatly encapsulates a set of complex ideas. We have recently seen such a word enter the lexicon: Grubering.

For those of you who missed it, an MIT Professor named Jonathan Gruber has been caught on video describing all the various ways that he helped the Obama Administration to deceive the public regarding the true nature of Obamacare.

gruberingPeople are now referring to what the Obamacare campaigners did as “Grubering”. Grubering is when politicians or their segregates engage in a campaign of exaggeration and outright lies in order to “sell” the public on a particular policy initiative. The justification for Grubering is that the public is too “stupid” to understand the topic and, should they be exposed to the true facts, would likely come to the “wrong” conclusion. Grubering is based on the idea that only the erudite academics can possibly know what’s best of the little people. Jefferson would be turning in his grave.

I think that no other word describes what we have seen in the climate debate quite as well as Grubering. The Climategate emails are full of discussions about how to “sell” the public on CAGW through a campaign of lies and exaggerations. There are many discussion about how the public could not possibly understand such a complex subject.

The late Steven Schneider puts it succinctly:

"On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."

Our critics sometimes dismiss skeptics as “conspiracy theorists” noting how unlikely it would be that thousands of scientists would collude. They miss the point. We now know that Grubering takes place — we see it laid bare in the Obamacare campaign. It was not strictly a “conspiracy”. Rather it was an arrogant belief that lying was necessary to persuade a “stupid” public to adopt the policy preferences of the politicians and the academics in their employ. Its Noble Cause Corruption, not conspiracy, that is at the root of this behavior.

“Climate Grubering” — its a powerful new word that can help us to describe what’s been going on.

" Grubering is when politicians or their segregates engage in a campaign of exaggeration and outright lies in order to “sell” the public on a particular policy initiative. The justification for Grubering is that the public is too “stupid” to understand the topic and, should they be exposed to the true facts, would likely come to the “wrong” conclusion. Grubering is based on the idea that only the erudite academics can possibly know what’s best of the little people. Jefferson would be turning in his grave."

This is a great point and a great post. The concept applies way beyond healthcare and climate alarmism as well. The whole leftist economic model is based on Grubering.

I only regret that we couldn't make a more universal verb out of the entire Democratic party of the last 10 years instead of out of one obscure academic whose work they used.

Siberian snow cover is causing the cold air here. What caused the increase in Siberian snow cover? Warmth? If so, then the earth has self correcting (negative feedback) mechanisms? Where are those in the IPCC model??------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About 14.1 million square kilometers of snow blanketed Siberia at the end of October, the second most in records going back to 1967, according to Rutgers University’s Global Snow Lab. The record was in 1976, which broke a streak of mild winters in the eastern U.S. In addition, the speed at which snow has covered the region is the fastest since at least 1998.

Taken together they signal greater chances for frigid air to spill out of the Arctic into more temperate regions of North America, Europe and Asia, said Judah Cohen, director of seasonal forecasting at Atmospheric and Environmental Research in Lexington, Massachusetts, who developed the theory linking Siberian snow with winter weather.

“A rapid advance of Eurasian snow cover during the month of October favors that the upcoming winter will be cold across the Northern Hemisphere,” Cohen said in an interview yesterday. “This past October the signal was quite robust.”...

Last year, 12.85 million square kilometers covered Eurasia at the end of October. By January, waves of frigid air were pummeling the U.S.

New Study: Two Thousand Years of Northern European Summer Temperatures Show a Downward TrendIn a paper published in the Journal of Quaternary Science, Esper et al. (2014) write that tree-ring chronologies of maximum latewood density (MXD) “are most suitable to reconstruct annually resolved summer temperature variations of the late Holocene.” And working with what they call “the world’s two longest MXD-based climate reconstructions” – those of Melvin et al. (2013) and Esper et al. (2012) – they combined portions of each to produce a new-and-improved summer temperature history for northern Europe that stretches all the way “from 17 BC to the present.”http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jqs.2726/fullhttp://www.co2science.org/articles/V17/dec/a19.php